Sunday

I finally gave home communion to the Jenny, an elderly woman in a nursing home. Her son, Bob, and my friend came with me. It was a real delight. Church was really good, today. I assisted, although I forgot that I was supposed to. I didn't sing the Kyrie, I spoke it. I just couldn't sing it and I didn't want to fail in the attempt when I could speak it in a more meaningful way.

I got home and helped Lori clean the house. My mom and step-dad were coming to visit on their way home from Boyne.

The day would have been boring by most standards, but I felt like I was busy and productive. I truly felt useful today. I went grocery shopping with Lori and Evan and Nathan. I cooked dinner, tacos and not very difficult at all, and I mowed the lawn.

I talked to my friend Deb. It always feels good to talk to a friend. I transcribed Pastor Mark's sermon. Although it has been a quiet day, I did get some things accomplished, and my mom and step-dad got to see the bathroom they paid for.

Friday night we went to the Harry Potter party at Barnes & Noble. We were there at midnight and had our Copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by 12:30am. I went to work on Saturday and slept most of the afternoon. We had pasta and meatballs for dinner.

Tired today.

I don't know if it because I didn't sleep well last night or if it because I haven't been taking walks like a should. I feel like a hypnotist is saying, "you are getting sleepy....sleepy."

Soon, I will be off to bed, but I wanted to share my adventure in grilling chicken halves.

Lori bought four chicken halves on sale at Meijer. I thought grilling them would be a lot like grilling chicken pieces, mainly get the grill really hot then put the chicken on and turn the grill down and let it cook slowly. It started out fine but then got really rough. After I put the chicken on I went to get my book, The Da Vinci Legacy, and finished a chapter.

The smoke was rising thick out of the grill and I checked the chicken. The fat was dripping on the burner covers causing flames to shoot out above the grill rack. I moved them around but the flames continued to burn the chicken skin. I put all four pieces on the top rack but the flames continued to rise for awhile.

I turned them, watched them and finally they looked like they were cooked and I brought them in. The outside meat was white, but the inside was still a bloody reddish pink. Except for the most burnt piece that was actually cooked nicely, the chicken was just too raw to eat.

I microwaved some of it so it was edible but not very tasty. This was my first grilling disaster of the year. I was really upset with it. I don't know where I went wrong. Lori said she won't get that kind again because it is too difficult to grill.

Oh well, at least the kids ate something. Evan was the best and cut his own chicken and ate two legs and a wing.

The party after the party

It was back to work today. I was tired and my co-worker pulled a no-show...AGAIN! Yes, it is frustrating but I managed to process 70 parts and kept the area under control. It wasn't a bad day, just felt tired.

Nathan celebrated his birthday again today. He has been having birthday parties in stages and he has one more coming up in late July or early August with my side of the family in Benton Harbor.

Tonight, Dave, Paula, Sean and Regan came over. We had cheesecake and Nathan opened presents from them. The running joke has been that they were going to give him Barbie underwear, Barbie, and My Little Pony dolls. In actuality he received Pokemon items (action figures, cards, and the Pokemon movie).

I included a link at the top of this blog to the slide show of the photos I took at the Saturday Celebration. Lori cropped them for a finished look. Dave said that they looked like the Chamber of Commerce quality. He was really pleased with what we did.

I took another Tickle test. They are fun. I hope this link works. http://web.tickle.com/net/account/profile/index.html?id=fTSSqJtOkvNGb9BO

Tonight was Committee Night at church. This is the first one I missed all year. I called Dawn, our council president and left a message with her daughter Britney that I would not be there. I hardly do anything at Committee Night anyway, because no one wants to join my committee.

Dave, Lori and Paula were looking at West Ottawa Year Books. I really didn't add much to the conversation. I found the conversation more interesting when we were talking about our children's health issues. But, it is always great having them around.

Saturday is Harry Potter night at Barnes & Noble.

Weekend Celebration

It should have been a larger family gathering, but it was a family gathering nonetheless. Lori's cousins, Mike and Eric left their respective homes on Friday with tents, beer keg, corn and hot sausage and headed for Walk Up Lake in Bitely. Dave, Lori's brother and his wife, Paula, own a cottage there. Mike and Eric set up their tents on the cottage yard, set up the beer keg and began the family gathering.

Lori's mom, Patricia, who passed away last year after a 20 year battle with cancer, was survived by her brother, Ronald James (Jim) and Judy. Jim and his wife Mary Sue have three children, Greg, Karin, and Dorthy (Dot). The three of them married, divorced and married again. They all have children and they are called the Virginia gang, although they do not all live in Virginia at this present time.

They are called the Virginia gang lovingly, jokingly and lazily. Yes, it is easier to lump then all under one fictitious title than it is to actually itemize them individually by residence, martial status and child custody and visitation allowances. Irregardless of how they are grouped, titled, or thought of, they are loved dearly by their extended family and are given the deepest heartfelt invitations to the annual family gathering at the Koster cottage in Bitely, and they all said that they would love to be there, but could not come that weekend.

The beer in the metal keg was very cold and despite the faulty seal on the tap, the spigot rendered the holder of a red plastic cup foamy comforting Bud Light. Now, light beer is not my first choice in beer, in fact, it comes in dead last or second to my first choice of regular beer. Budweiser is my second choice in the Anheuser-Busch family. Michelob being my first and Busch being my least favorite. I know that the beer drinkers present at the Smith Koster-Pond-Zindler (Judy divorced her husband Jerry and re-married Ted Zindler, the two of the haven't missed this gathering since it started three years ago) gathering are not nearly as picky, choosy, or snobbish about beer as I am, but I know what I like. I drank at least seven of those plastic red cups filled with ice cold Bud Light. Had it been Michelob, Molson or Labatt, well let's just say I would have a lot more; which is just as well because I drove home at 11:30 pm.

We left Saturday morning, yesterday, around 10:00 am. We arrived there shortly before noon. I had not eaten anything and was feeling it. It never ceases to amaze me how my appetite reflects my emotions concerning any given situation. Throughout the week, I arrive at work shortly before 7am and remain there at least until 3pm and some days as late as 5pm. I don't eat anything, I only drink coffee and water. As soon as I walk in the door of our three bedroom bath and half ranch, my stomach rumbles and I am craving food. Here it was noon and I was very hungry. I conclude that I don't like the work I am doing at all and my appetite or lack thereof is the physical manifestation or reflection of my deepest heartfelt feelings about my work or situation. In other words, I loved being at the family gathering at Walk Up Lake, but I detest being at work.

The food was abundant. Pulled Barbecue Pork, Potato salad, which I peeled and sliced the potatoes(Lori sliced the onions, boiled the potatoes, and hard boiled and peeled the eggs, onions and made the dressing with Mayonnaise, Mustard, and her secret ingredient), fruit salad, sliced fresh vegetables with dip, hot dogs, hot sausage, roasted corn, and baked beans. Oh, did I forget to mention the dessert? Well, perhaps to say the food was abundant was an understatement.

There was supposed to be four more people there, two adults and two children, all with very healthy appetites, not that they are overweight, quite contrary, they are all very physically active and eat to live. They are, Tom and Marcy, and their two boys, Spencer and Troy. Marcy is Judy's daughter, sister to Mike and Eric, and cousin to Lori. Tom is her husband, and they cancelled on Friday because Troy had a softball tournament. We we all sad and disappointed that they were not there.

At this point you might be thinking that we attempted to drown the sorrow of sadness and disappointment that we felt from the absence of Marcy Simpson family and the Virginia Gang by imbibing cups of Bud Light and attempted in vain eat the reminder away of why we were drinking in the first place, by consuming heaping helpings of the meat, salads, buns, beans and vegetables half covered in a sour cream based dip, but we didn't. We drank the cups of Bud Light and ate from the overly abundant(forgive the redundant phrasing) supply of food because we were there and so was the beer and food.

I spent most of the 11 hours and 43 minutes of the time there reading the Da Vinci Legacy, taking digital photos, eating roasted corn and other food items, and drinking Bud Light from those large red plastic cups. Those cups reminded me of my college days when I would go to a keg party. There were two colors of these cups, red and blue. I have never seen any green, yellow, purple or orange cups, just red and blue. In Star Wars theology, we have two choices the blue of Obi-Wan Kenobi or the red of Sith Lords. I guess yesterday we were the red of the Sith Lords, but none of us made objects fly, choked one another with our minds or made blue lightening to fly from our fingertips. Perhaps the Jedi theology of Star Wars doesn't apply to the family gathering at Walk Up Lake, but it sure would be an entertaining show if it did.

The entertainment came from golf cart rides on the wooded trails, canoe rides in the high winds, and from intoxicated karaoke. The karaoke began with 10 year old Sean Koster being proded into singing by his eight year old cousin, Nathan. Nathan had provided earlier entertainment by removing all his clothes and being told that if he did, he would be tossed into the lake. This threat/promise was made by his mother, Lori, who then delegated action of this threat/promise to me, his father. I continually told Nathan to keep his clothes on, but he removed them all nonetheless and I picked up the buck naked child and carried him to the end of the dock and tossed him into the water. He had changed his mind and wanted to get dressed, and ended up in the lake crying out of anger, frustration and embarrassment.

Bob, the prancing, prissy, Labradoddle, was also entertaining. He spilled Nathan's pop and ate one of his hot dogs. He jumped on everyone, tried eating corn husks from the trash and basically wore himself out. By the end of the day, he was sleeping on the ground near the campfire.

I added to the karaoke entertainment by lending my assistance to the "singing" of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." I took Adam on two golf cart rides, and Evan on a canoe ride that ended with me walking the canoe to shore, because the wind blew us across the lake and made it almost impossible to make it back to shore.

Lori ended the night's entertainment by falling down while walking up the cement steps to get to the van. The greatest entertainment by far was seeing the stars in the clear northern sky. It was breathtaking and spectacular. It was for that reason that I stayed later than I wanted to.

The drive home was a bit nerve racking for me, because it was at night on twisting turning dipping and hilly country roads. As we got closer to home I was speeding on US 31 heading south to home here in Holland. Suddenly bright lights appeared in my rear view mirror, I was in the right lane behind another van in the right lane since were north of Spring Lake and I kept it that way all the way to West Olive. In other words, we were both speeding, but the other driver was always going faster. As those bright lights got closer I slowed down closer to 55 and then I saw that it indeed was a Sheriff SUV. The flashing lights were turned on after it passed me on the left and the other van was pulled over. I guess I got lucky, or perhaps my little bit of caution paid off. I pulled into the driveway around 1:20am and was in bed by 1:30.am I slept until 11:30am.

I drank a Miller Chill and a tumbler of water while writing this and thought about seeing all those stars and felt thankful for all the astronomy that I remembered and a little regret that I didn't remember more. But as Eric said, "just look at those stars and think of the depth of it all." Truly. it was a night worth remembering.

Back to work

I enjoyed having a week long break from work. It began last Friday when I arrived at home 5:45 pm. I opened a bottle of chilled white wine and said, "My vacation begins now!" I seeded the lawn, placed paving bricks next to our back patio, and spent a lot fun time with my three boys. We went to the beach, swam, watched fireworks. We ate ice cream, McDonald's Value Meals and grilled food. We went to the nature center, played tag and watched DVDs.

I drank tequila, beer and wine. I stayed up late most nights and slept in most mornings. I worked on story that I am trying to write, but I keep losing focus on it. I really don't want to go back to work, but "my vacation ends tonight." The worst part was getting poison ivy and the best part was watching movies with my wife. I always think of things I should have done, but I always am happy with the fun I had.

If it weren't for a lousy job I could not appreciate the paid time off.